Ice-cream marketing
In the UK Unilever has hired MRM Partners to create an online campaign in order to build brand loyalty towards the Carte D’Or ice cream brand. Netimperative explains the agency has created a website with the best competition ever: a draw to win a year’s free Carte D’Or ice-cream 
On the other side of the Ocean, as Gary refers on his blog, Ben & Jerry has started selling a lock for their pint-size containers. It’s probably first product a brand sells to prevent you consuming its products!
The competition is good but the commitment to an online element seems a bit half-hearted. The website does not use the opportunity to tell you more about their ice cream flavours, or give you games, or good content. The site demands a lot more than it gives - up to 5,000 characters of writing, for a *chance* to win ice cream. Offline, that is quite normal (although for shorter lengths of writing), with prize forms, but online it seems like a wasted chance to hook me into the brand.
On a different note, in the UK the timing could have waited, given that last week the shadow chancellor accused the chancellor of giving up his hopes of being prime minister when Tony Blair “bought him an ice cream”